Princeton, U.S.A. — A recent ORC International survey of American adults has found that awareness of the Occupy Wall Street movement is unchanged since the intense media coverage of the movement’s events through fall and winter of 2011 but that support for the movement has declined.

ORC International updated a series of questions about Occupy Wall Street asked in late 2011 and found that seventy-one percent of Americans remain aware of the movement, even while media coverage has significantly declined. Protesters have largely dispersed from the parks and fronts steps of the world’s financial capitals.

The continued awareness is in part to the ongoing social dialogue that continues by both supporters and protesters of the movement. According to ORC’s social analytics product, Social Buzz, Occupy Wall Street conversations continue to steadily appear with an average of 156,000 posts daily in the social universe since mid-December. This is mostly driven by specifically timed events including the six month anniversary to re-occupy Zuccotti Park in New York City on March 17-18, mass arrests on March 22, and a May Day Protest.

Overall agreement with the movement’s position regarding the financial inequities continues to hold steady at thirty percent since the fall, however, those who disagree has risen seven percentage points to twenty-eight percent over the past six months.

While levels of coverage in both social media and traditional media have varied, the combination has continued to keep this movement in front of the American public. Long-term sustainability of the movement, however, remains a question.

The poll was conducted using ORC International’s CARAVAN service from June 9-11, 2012. The poll interviewed 1005 US Adults by telephone.

ORC International is a leading global research firm with offices across the U.S.A., Europe and Asia Pacific. The company has been a partner of CNN on the CNN/ORC International poll since 2006 and is a founding member of the CASRO.

Image Courtesy of  Atomische • Tom Giebel

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A new poll suggests that over a third of Americans support the Occupy Wall Street protests while 58 per cent are enraged by the protests. In Albuquerque, a 48-year old man was arrested for throwing a knife at protesters near the University of New Mexico on Friday 21. The attack was directly related to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The poll, conducted by Associated Press-GFK, revealed that 37 per cent of Americans support that the protests have spread from New York to numerous cities across the country and globe. Occupy Wall Street which originally began as a lower manhattan protest consisting of a few hundred marchers, has rapidly expanded across the nation and soon all over the globe.

Influenced by ‘Occupy Wall Street’, protesters have taken a stand in nearly 30 cities in the U.S as well as parts of Asia and Europe. Over five thousand people marched through the streets of Los Angeles and congregated peacefully outside City Hall on October 15. Marchers also travelled from Wall Street to the West Village and settled in Times Square on October 15.

Times Square is a notorious tourist spot and having these marchers crowd the streets affected store owners, businesses, tourists and shoppers. A tourist travelling from south Florida with his family, Mark Bryan, said “This is really unfair of those who came all the way to New York to see the city.

It is intimidating and my children are scared of the marchers. I don’t understand why the can’t protest outside governmental buildings instead.” The protesters chanted, “We got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street.” The protest continued last weekend and took place on the Upper West Side and travelled to Columbus Circle Friday 21.

The marchers were joined once again by a celebrity in favour of the protests; this time Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Seeger, 92, is a famous and hugely popular American folk singer marched and sang and performed with the protesters all night. The protesters, who come from all walks of life, are settled in Zuccotti Park, Manhattan.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has told protesters to leave the park as tourists who do not want to pay for hotel rooms, may camp in the park as an alternative. He also claimed they were damaging the park with their trash. School teacher, Shawn Johns, responded to this statement saying “We are not causing an damage to this park.

Each person cleans up after themselves and we have volunteers who are circling the park with trash bags to ensure the park is not left in an undesirable way.” The clean up after the weekends protest has taken place all this week in Manhattan, amongst other cities and although the damage may be at large, so was the message prevailed.

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